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This weekend the alarms went off in the Colombian National Team: Napoli presented cases of covid-19 and the rumor spread in Italy that the players must be in isolation, which would prevent David Ospina from traveling to Barranquilla for the first game of the Qualifiers for Qatar 2022, against Venezuela (October 9); and obviously the game against Chile (October 13) would also be lost.
Thinking about the fact that Ospina is not in the goal of Colombia causes chills to many, because the 32-year-old from Antioquia has been the lord and master of the tricolor goal. However, in any situation that Carlos Queiroz needs, he summoned men like Camilo Vargas, Álvaro Montero and Aldair Quintana, to fill the goalkeeper position and be in an eventual elimination match.
Although none of Ospina’s substitutes have experience in qualifying games. The truth is that David has not let them touch the goal in matches heading to the World Cups for a long time. Thus, the ‘1’ of the Selection has 36 consecutive qualifying matches as a starter.
And there is a chilling data from Ospina and the National Team: the last goalkeepers who saved in Qualifying before David, are retired! The last one who could ‘smell’ that arc was Agustín Julio, on September 9, 2009, in the Colombian 3-1 defeat against Uruguay.
The other two goalkeepers who stopped in the Qualifiers, before Ospina’s irruption, were Faryd Mondragón, today a commentator, and Miguel Calero (RIP).
Precisely on October 10, one day after the Colombia vs. Venezuela, David Ospina will celebrate eleven years of not releasing the starter in Qualifiers, because on that date, in 2009, he played against Chile and has not stopped cutting in the South American qualifiers.
